Mr. Speaker, in response to part (a) of the question, the pilot heatwave attribution system is based directly on a published event attribution analysis of a heatwave which occurred in May 2023 in Alberta. Since the pilot system began running in March 2024, it has been applied to a range of moderate heatwaves in regions across Canada over the period March – June 2024. These have been used to evaluate the system, but the results have not been published.

With regard to part (b), research is going on this year to expand the system to allow attribution of cold extremes, and precipitation extremes. Applying rapid event attribution to cold extremes is a technically straightforward update to the existing system but requires research to ensure that the climate models used are able to simulate these events realistically. Attribution of precipitation extremes requires evaluation of observational datasets, and more in-depth model evaluation. We plan to include these variables in the rapid event attribution system by the end of March 2025.

With regard to part (c), Environment and Climate Change Canada has collaborated with Natural Resources Canada to carry out an event attribution study of the 2023 Canadian wildfire season which has been submitted to a scientific journal but has not yet been peer reviewed. It is anticipated that this study could be used as a basis for attribution of future extreme wildfire seasons on an expedited timeline, compared to many months for a typical analysis. Such analyses are typically applied to a whole fire season, rather than individual wildfires. Research on rapid event attribution of flooding across Canada is a part of the rapid event attribution project and it will be developed in the next two to five years. Droughts tend to be longer-term phenomena that are not as well suited to rapid attribution. We do not currently have plans to include drought in the rapid event attribution system, but attribution of drought is a subject for future research.

Much of this research is taking place at Environment and Climate Change Canada offices at the University of Victoria, in Victoria.

Steven Guilbeault

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